An Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) survey of 1,006 companies across Canada shows that many businesses are not employing recommended technological tools or practices to protect the digitally-stored personal information of their customers. For example, the survey found that while the vast majority of companies are using passwords to protect personal information [...]
Courthouse News Service reports that a virginia judge has ruled Facebook “Likes” are not protected speech. The case was related to employees of the Hampton VA sheriff’s office who “Liked” the current sheriff’s opponent in the last election. After he was re-elected, he fired many of the people who had supported his opponent. The judge ruled [...]
PC World reports on a court case in New York concerning telecommunications provider Verizon and a book publisher. The publisher is seeking the personal data of 10 of Verizon’s customers, and the company is refusing. PC World reports: Verizon is fighting a move by a book publisher to obtain personal information on ten of its [...]
The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation has released a report on data breach notifications (office pdf; archive pdf), and the office says that “encryption is a key – but often lacking – component in information security.” “Our analysis found that our businesses, institutions and others need to do a better job protecting [...]
Computerworld takes a look at “frictionless sharing” with Netflix, the DVD rental and online video streaming service. There has been recent interest in Congress in changing the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, which requires written consent from consumers before video rental records can be shared, and the consent must be given before each disclosure. The [...]
In the last couple of months, there has been increasing focus on the practice by some employers of requiring job applicants to hand over their passwords or allow access to their private accounts on social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Google+ in order to gather personal data when the social-networking profiles are closed to the public. In April, [...]
http://www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/reports/rp_data-breach-investigations-report-2012_en_xg.pdf A report by Verizon highlights some extremely troubling trends about the types of data breaches occurring around the globe and also how organizations of all sizes are failing to adequately respond to new threats. Verizon studied 855 breaches in 2011 involving organizations in 36 countries and compromising over 174 million records. Those figures are [...]
Young people today are sophisticated users of the Internet, using this medium with ease and enthusiasm. It is important that they understand the impact that these technologies can have on their privacy, and that they have the tools and information they need to make smart decisions. That’s why the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities (APPA) forum, [...]
The New York Times gives tips on how to make it more difficult to track your Internet activities. Here’s the context of why you’d want to cloak your Internet trail: There are no secrets online. That emotional e-mail you sent to your ex, the illness you searched for in a fit of hypochondria, those hours [...]